Last thing on this whole crap, but more honest talk, while I cheer for the demise of coal, I do not cheer for the impact of the communities they serve, and it's something that has to legitimately be addressed no matter who runs this crap. Most coal plants as I stated are pretty old, and therefore essentially pillars of a community they are near, they often employ nearly a hundred if not more people, and often highly skilled and highly paying jobs, which for any small to decent sized town is important. Let alone the twice yearly migrant workforce that comes in for outage seasons.
All of that is not easy to replace, so it's understandable why it's death is highly resisted, I just wish it was an honest conversation about household economics, environment, and the future, instead of digging ones heal in and claiming that climate change is a hoax, or downplay they affects coal has. That's how it's sold to a lot of those communities, but the underlying truth of a negative local impact can't also be denied.
As a person who will never forget my first time at a coal plant and then taking a shower and blowing my nose and seeing the just horrible amount of gross black soot from the coal piles and crushers come out of my nose, and while they do have filters in the stacks, and do a lot of things to try and "clean it up" it ain't clean. You'll never forget it. Though it did feel a bit like Zoolander when he was complaining about having black lung after one day in the mines.
Will the transition be cheap? No, but nor is maintaining these old, decrepit, and increasing unreliable plants that have been around for 40-50 years. Solar literally is the cheapest option now, coal can't hack it, and even natural gas plants are often put in a holding pattern. Many utilities see the costs going down, and wet their feet as they can. It's only going to be more like that, not less. Why invest in a 350MW combined cycle plant when it takes about 5-6 years to realize it, I have to staff it, and pay fuel costs, when I could build 50MW of solar a year that keeps getting cheaper and add a battery at the end of it, and end up in roughly the same spot. That is the thinking right now (for the most part)
The real battle will be how quickly do you want to it, and I feel like the same thing with electric cars, which while also the future, most people don't purchase a car every year, let alone every 5 or so, so the turn over, even if you only sold just electric starting tomorrow, isn't instant, nor would I expect it to be. But the future for wind and solar, is here, and it isn't going away
